In conventional continuous glass making processes, raw glass making materials are placed in one end of an elongated regenerative furnace and removed from the opposite end in the form of a molten finished glass after being subjected through the furnace to fusion, refining and cooling to a working temperature. It has been long suggested to mount a burner in the roof of a glass melting furnace. It has also been common to use an oxygen-fuel burner in the glass melting furnaces in which pure oxygen is used in place of air as the oxidant in the burner.
Roof mounted burners used in glass melting furnaces may be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 3,129,930 for a mobile roof burner system for heating of open hearth furnaces and in U.S. Pat. No. 3,337,324 for a process for melting and refining glass batch materials. U.S. Pat. No. 4,816,056 is for a process of heating and agitating multi-stage melting and refining of glass in which the burner flame impinges upon the surface of the glass.
Roof mounted oxygen/fuel burner systems for glass melting furnaces may be seen in the following U.S. Patents.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,604,123 is for a process and installation for heating molten glass flowing through a channel having a vault therein with a roof top mounted oxyfuel burner.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,139,558 is for a roof mounted auxiliary oxygen-fired burner in a glass melting furnace mounted in the roof of a cross-fired regenerative furnace.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,237,369 is for a roof mounted oxygen-fuel burner for a glass melting furnace. The fuel and the oxygen are controlled so that the velocities of both are substantially equivalent to provide a generally laminar gaseous fuel and oxygen flow.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,422,041 is for a method of boosting a glass melting furnace using a roof mounted oxygen-fuel burner in order to increase production capacity.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,540,508 is a process of installing a roof mounted oxygen-fuel burner in a glass melting furnace.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,705,117 is a method of heating a glass melting furnace using a roof mounted staged combustion oxygen-fuel burner.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,705,118 is for a method of boosting a glass melting furnace using a roof mounted oxygen-fuel burner.
Applicant's prior U.S. Pat. No. 5,302,112 is for a combustion burner apparatus having independent flow streams, one for an oxidizer and one for a fuel with an adjustable control capability to permit various flame configurations and reproducible combustion rates at different oxidizer and gaseous fuel flow rates. The burner block uses a primary and a secondary oxidizer passageway positioned at angles. The burner also has a gaseous fuel supply separated into primary and secondary fuel paths. Applicant's prior U.S. Pat. No. 5,554,022 is for a burner apparatus for the combustion of fuel and oxygen in which the burner flame pattern can be controlled as to the shape and position within the combustion chamber.
The present invention is for an oxygen fuel burner in the roof of a glass melting furnace which can vary the shape of the flame and which can produce a moving flame pattern, also referred to as sweeping or to sweep, as desired. The burner has a housing having an oxygen inlet pipe coupled to an oxygen chamber in the housing and a fuel inlet pipe coupled to a burner nozzle in the housing. The fuel is fed to the nozzle fuel port through a crossover set of channels while the oxygen chamber feeds a plurality of nozzle oxygen ports. The oxygen port outlets are each angled toward the fuel port outlet. A rotating impeller in the housing oxygen chamber over the oxygen ports has a notched or partial opening that causes a variable moving or sweeping flame in the burner as the impeller rotates. The impeller can also be raised or lowered to control the flow of oxygen to the plurality of oxygen port outlets to control the shape of the burner flame.